


Maid In Waiting

by tinx_r



Category: Sprig Muslin - Georgette Heyer
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinx_r/pseuds/tinx_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lady Hester Theale had a dream, once...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maid In Waiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bow/gifts).



> Dearest Yuletide recipient, I trust this offering pleases you. Thank you for your lovely prompts. Greetings of the season!

On the occasion of her coming-out, the Lady Hester Theale had cherished a number of girlish dreams. Her father, ever a stern parent, had never allowed her access to such thing as a circulating library, yet the fairy-tales she had imbibed at the knee of her dearly-departed old nurse had taken root.

It was not, exactly, that she was expecting a prince upon a white horse. Nor yet a poisoned apple, or an enchanted mirror. But, down deep, she believed that when he came, she would know him -- her heart would know him -- and that he would carry her off from the dark, crumbling pile of Brancaster (or Grosvenor Square, if one wanted to be precise) to a life of happiness and a whole new kind of enchantment.

For a brief, fairy-tale ball, she had believed every dream come true. Her heart had known her suitor and, alone in her bed, she allowed herself to consider a golden, fairy-tale future.

It was a mistake she would not make again. Her Prince Charming had feet of clay, or perhaps she had simply stumbled into the wrong story. Clarissa was her friend, but Clarissa, spoiled, headstrong, with everything she had ever wanted laid at her feet, needed no enchanted prince.

Yet, willy-nilly, Lady Hester's prince knelt before the wrong princess, and Hester, banishing her dreams to cloud cuckoo land where they belonged, accepted her lot.

For her there would be no prince, nor yet even a knight. And she had not yet fallen so low as to accept a woodcutter.

Dutifully, she went up to Town each season, cast back in the shadow, the ugly sister, pushed aside yet unable to be forgotten. One by one, her sisters found lives of their own -- not without difficulty as, pretty though they were, an undowered girl attracted princes only in nursery stories -- and Lady Hester watched them settle without so much as a pang.

If it was merely a husband she wanted, she could have had one. But the broken, tragic prince remained beyond her reach, inserting himself, from time to time, into her night's rest.

For, try as she might, Lady Hester had never truly managed to close the door to cloud cuckoo land.

*

The first night in the tiny inn, wiping sweat from Gareth's fevered brow, she had felt herself in the grip of a nightmare. The door had sneaked open, and now history repeated itself before her eyes -- her perfect prince had fought a dragon for a chance-met princess, young, pretty, a-brim with magic.

How could she, Hester Theale, compete with that?

But time was a strange thing, especially in cloud cuckoo land. When allowed to run its course, it came full circle. Hester had supposed herself an on-looker in Clarissa's story; no heroine, barely even a maid-in-waiting. Yet time marched on, and as the pages turned, Hester began to hope -- to dream -- that perhaps this time, _this time_ , the magical spell was hers.

Amanda, child of the heart, had no such qualms. Hester quailed inwardly at her temerity -- no fool, Amanda, no shrinking child to sit in her tower and await her prince. She wrote her own story, with dragons and widowers and evil kings, and through it all, her knight -- unmounted, potentially tarnished, with no palace or riches, merely a tent and a life behind the drum -- came patiently and faithfully in his allotted place.

It gave Hester courage and she turned her eyes to her own wounded prince who had, after all, never written himself out of the story. He had come -- with no lover-like ardour, it was true -- but come he had, nonetheless, to beg her on (figurative) bended knee.

Had she allowed it, the bended knee could, no doubt, have been her reality.

Clarissa, shining princess -- a diversion, no more. Should she -- would she -- allow a memory or a ghost to write her story? Amanda would never, of that she was sure.

As the days stretched on, as she learned him better than she ever had before, she learned something else, also. Clarissa was forgot -- not from his memory, he was not so shallow; nor would she have loved him had he been so indifferent -- but from his life, from the pages of his story. The sheets were ready, clean and white, awaiting only the inscription of a new name.

Her prince. Her sweet prince, true and waiting down the years, exactly as she'd dreamed in her nursery cradle. Hester was a little angry at her youthful self, with benefit of hindsight -- for how could one skip straight to the happy ending? Was not each and every story filled with hardship and peril? What temerity to imagine that for her, the stars would align without testing her first?

But she had been tried and tested, and now -- now, if she was not much mistaken, now came that end she'd dreamed of. There was no enchanted sleep, nor yet a glass slipper -- simply his large hand, all the strength returned to it, clasping hers.

His warm, laughing eyes, filled with joy and promise as they rested on her. His voice, deep and rich, uttering some gentle tease that was really a pledge of love.

It made her young again, young and girlish, foolish as a child. As foolish as Amanda and Hildebrand, or more so, for neither, she was sure, had ever felt as she did now. Even Amanda and her Brigade-Major; for love came deeper the second time around. Stronger when it was earned; better bestowed than freely given.

Thirty years in the waiting, lost and found, enchanted and broken, yet, at the last, her prince had come.

It was time for the next chapter. 

Lady Hester Theale slipped her hand into her affianced husband's, and smiled. For the first time in a long time, she looked forward to a happy future -- a future in Berkeley Square, not in Cloud Cuckoo Land. 

"I hope you are partial to macaroons," she said thoughtfully. "I believe we are having them for tea."


End file.
